Stocking as an Emergent Property of Social-Ecological Interactions in a Stochastic World

One common, but usually undesirable, emergent property of social-ecological interactions is the development of panaceas. To highlight key mechanisms and outcomes of the emergence of a stocking-based management panacea in response to social-ecological interactions and feedbacks we present an empirically informed model of a coupled social-ecological system (SES) of recreational fisheries. We find regular fish stocking develops as a robust panacea when management decisions are affected by harvest-dependent angler satisfaction and provided that stochastic natural recruitment meets with the basic human psychological property of remembering past rewards and basing future expectations on them. The panacea’s social benefits involve a dampening of natural population fluctuations, which generates stability in the provision of salient cultural ecosystem services (e.g., angler well-being). While stocking generally preserves the renewable natural resource, it may facilitate the replacement of wild by stocking-descended individuals. This is particularly likely when stocking occurs with reasonably fit individuals and natural productivity is low providing little buffer against competition by stocked fish. The potential for stocking-based panacea formation is particularly likely under user-based management regimes whenever users are engaged in, or lobby for, using technical fixes to counter declining natural resources. The net result will be an ecosystem providing stable cultural ecosystem services, while being comprised of an altered and potentially genetically homogenized species community. Redistributing authority among multiple levels may help solving the issue.